Is this going to be your year for turning “On” the power of business development in your business? If your answer is yes, here are seven keys to success:

√1.Focus on client’s profits, not your own.

There is a limited demand for tax return preparation services, but there is unlimited demand for professionals who help clients improve profits! If you are still focusing on increasing your billable hours, billing rates or net fees, it’s time to reorient your thinking.

√2. Build relationships with your clients’ other team members

This year, plan to meet with your Top 10 clients’ other professionals, owners and influencers. If you focus on not-for-profits, get to know some of the board members. All of these people are the movers and shakers in your community. For your commercial clients, get to know the next generation of managers and owners. Create a team working for your client, and you will create a referral team that also works for you.

√3. Develop a unique selling proposition.

When meeting with prospects, focus on the value you can offer, and on what makes you different than your competitors. Fee terms should almost be an afterthought. When you bring value through your uniqueness, client will pay more even in a tough economy.

√4. Learn to ask better questions.

Knowing how to ask good questions is the foundation of being an effective advisor. Through questioning, you learn what you need to know to help your clients. Good questions will make your prospect or client uncomfortable in their present state. Comfortable clients don’t buy much.

√5. Help clients prepare for the future.

Past may be prologue, but clients are more interested in today and tomorrow than they are in yesterday. Help your clients use financial statements as a foundation for making better judgments and business decisions. Use our Bear Hug Action Plan to help you focus on the future.

√6. Prepare a services matrix.

Prepare a matrix of clients and services used for your largest clients. Probably 5% of your clients (including families and controlled groups) make up over 50% of your revenue. Use the matrix to determine your best opportunities. After you’ve prepared this matrix, call on each client and review potential services.

√7. Don’t hibernate during compliance season.

Clients are never more interested in help with their business than when confronted with last year’s financial results or with their tax liability. Plan now for cross-selling to each client you meet with during this filing season. Augment the effort with press releases, articles, and mailings. Prepare the materials before the season; release them during compliance time.

8. Always Give More Than You Promise.

Always exceed your client expectations and you will have a continuous flow of delighted clients. Sometimes, under pressure, you may promise a report before it can realistically be completed. Learn to manage expectations by promising the outside date, not the earliest. Then deliver earlier.

As I watched my 10 year old daughter’s dive practice the other day I saw her and many kids on the team jump effortlessly off the board; diving, flipping, and twisting into the water. It all seemed so effortless until they began doing back dives and flips. Their dive coach tells them that mechanically it is easier for your body to do a back flip than a front flip, yet these kids found it much harder to make the jump. Some of them would stand there almost paralyzed until they and the coach built them up to a level of comfort and confidence that they could do it. And when they did the back dives and flips did seem to be as easy as the coach said they were.

Still, standing backwards on a high dive is scary. It is a blind, leap of faith. You know the water is at the bottom of the dive… the same as if you were facing the other way. Yet your mind races ahead thinking of the potential disasters that could take place when you can’t see what is waiting.

This all struck me as similar to what happens to many accountants and accounting firms. Often you know and understand what you should do in order to be successful and grow yet when you are standing there ready to jump you hesitate not knowing exactly what will unfold if you leave the safety of normal routine. For many accountants an analogy to use would be growing your list of prospects and proactively reaching out to them to develop business. It’s great to think of generating new revenue however the visions of rejection start entering your head and picking up the phone then becomes the equivalent of jumping backwards into that water.

Similarly, I was speaking with the Managing Partner of an accounting firm the other day and he described how his firm has been agonizing over the same technology decisions for years. He understands that the non decisions have been holding the firm back from being more efficient and thus more profitable yet the fear of making a bad choice has been too powerful to overcome. Their firm has researched and talked about the issues with other firms, staff, and IT experts. Yet he sits there wanting to make the jump but can’t, so he does nothing which hurts the firm.

Often accountants for years will put off doing things for fear of the unknown. They don’t want to confront partners who are setting a bad example; they defer developing firm successors, and some even obtain loans from the bank rather than collect accounts receivables from clients.

Just as jumping backward from the diving board sends fear through divers heads. Running a business and being a leader can be frightening when you can’t always see what’s out there. Still, making that leap of faith, living with no regrets by taking action, and ignoring all the unnecessary fear and anxiety often associated with being a leader can and will move you ahead of your competitors and place you at a higher level within your firm and the accounting profession.

Patrick Pruett

The Alliance of Professional Associations